Why I love Ziplist

Posted by Kevin on Jun 20, 2012 in Tips | 2 comments

If you’ve ever met me in person, it won’t be long before you hear me talk about ZipList and how much I love it. Ziplist is a free online resource for recipes, meal planning and grocery shopping. As a foodie, I use ZipList for my recipes. And as a stay at home dad, I use it for meal planning and grocery shopping. I love the meal planning feature. I used to spend half a day planning my meals…not anymore. I’ve had several people ask me to write about how I’ve simplified grocery shopping and meal planning. Well, here you go Kelly Krause.

 

Please note that this is not a paid endorsement. I just love Ziplist.

 

The first thing I want to tell you is that Ziplist is a great way to store all of your recipes online. I never have to buy a cookbook again. I have most of my recipes on this site converted to zip list. (Look for the blue “Save Recipe” button on my recipes. Click it to automatically save the recipe to your ZipList account.) A lot of food blogs use this feature, which makes it easier for the reader to save a recipe they may like.

 

 

When you save a recipe on ZipList, you can pull it up on any device that is connected to the internet. I have the app on my iPhone and iPad, so I am not tied down to my computer. When I’m cooking I can easily pull up the recipe on my iPad, no need to print anything out. Click here to read about how I use my iPad to cook.

 

The great thing about having your recipes on ZipList is you can easily create your grocery list from the recipes you want to use.

 

When you go to add, you can deselect any ingredient you have on hand. Or, just add all the ingredients to your list. And when it comes to lists, you can never have too many. You can create a standard weekly list, special items, menu planning, anything type of list you want!

 

 

Remember I said that I have ZipList on all of my mobile devices? This comes in very handy for grocery shopping. The Groupie Wife and I share an account, so anything I add to a list automatically shows up on her phone, and vice versa. So if I’m going to the grocery store and she notices that we are out of paper towels, she simply adds it on her phone (or computer) and it will show up on my phone immediately.

 

Another benefit is the ZipList Recipe Clipper. See it in the top left corner in the picture below?

 

It’s like the Pinterest “Pin It” button on your bookmark menu. Regardless of what site you’re on, if you see a recipe you like, simply click the “ZipList Recipe Clipper” and it will save it to your ZipList account.

 

The meal planning function is outstanding. I pick what recipes I want to cook for the week (or month) and add them to my meal plan. I then go into my meal plan and assign it to what day I want to cook it. It then syncs with all my devices.

 

 

 

Gone are the days of me cluttering our kitchen table with countless cook books and notepads, writing down what I want to cook, listing all the ingredients, checking off the ones that I have, and then writing a NEW list because the original one is so sloppy and scratched over. I can now create a meal plan and list in a matter of minutes.

 

So what are your thoughts? Do you use Zip List or something else? I would love to hear any tips you may have when it comes to meal planning or grocery shopping. As always, thanks for reading and keep on rockin’.

 

RSD